Week 7 Total War Flanders, Germans fleeing during a gas attack.

Week 7Total War

Flanders, Germans fleeing during a gas attack

Shifting Balance of Power

The Diplomatic Revolution, 1900-1907

Cartoon depicting Britain walking off with France, while Germany feigns disinterest.

The Agadir Crisis (1911)

The Balkan Wars (1912-13)• First Balkan War (1912): Serbia,

Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro wrest control of Macedonia from Turkey.

• Second Balkan War (1913): Bulgaria attacks Serbia and is decisively defeated by the Greeks and Serbs.

• Anglo-German co-operation secures a settlement in the Balkans at the London Conference.

• Germany initially restrains Austria, but after 1913 she agrees to back her ally in any future confrontation with Serbia (and by extension Russia).

Rearmament

Source: Farmer & Stiles, The Unification of Germany 1815-1919

The Spark: The July Crisis• 28 June: Archduke Franz Ferdinand

and wife Sophie assassinated at Sarajevo.

• 5 July: Kaiser Wilhelm II offers Germany’s unconditional support (the ‘blank cheque’) to Austria-Hungary.

• 23 July: Austria issues her ultimatum to Serbia.

• 28 July: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. Russia orders ‘partial mobilisation’ of her armed forces.

• 30 July: Russia orders general mobilisation. Austria orders general mobilisation.

• 1 August: Germany declares war on Russia. France orders mobilisation.

• 2 August: Germany issues an ultimatum to Belgium, demanding to be allowed to move troops through Belgian territory.

• 3 August: Germany declares war on France. Italy proclaims her neutrality.

• 4 August: German troops cross the Belgian frontier. Britain declares war on Germany.

Burgfrieden / Civil Truce

”Ich kenne keine Parteien mehr, kenne nur noch Deutsche”

I no longer know parties, I know only Germans.

Map of Schlieffen Plan

German troops charging into battle (above) and diggingin to defensive positions (below) in the west, 1914

Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934)

• 1847: Born at Poznan in Prussian Poland, the son of an East Prussian landowner.

• Educated at cadet schools in Wahlstadt and Berlin.

• Fought at Königgrätz (1866) and in the Franco-Prussian War.

• 1878: Joined the General Staff.• 1905: Promoted to the rank of

General.• 1911: Retired from active service.• 22 August 1914: Brought out of

retirement to command the German Eighth Army in East Prussia.

• Victory at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes made him a national hero.

• In many ways the archetypal Prussian Junker.

The ‘Easterners’:Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Hoffmann and Mackensen by Oskar

Bruch

Trench Warfare

Postcard: Resting in the Trenches,c. 1914

The Battlefield in the Argonne Forest (1916)

Trench Warfare

German troops attacking, July 1916 (Top Left), posedphotograph of a ‘Storm Trooper’ (Bottom Left), German soldier wearing First World War trench armour (Above)

Ernst Jünger

• “In battle, the animal ascends as the secret horror at the soul’s base, shooting high as a consuming flame, an irresistible rapture that intoxicates the masses, a godhead enthroned above the hosts...”

• “We’ve been harnessed and chiselled, but we are also such as swing the hammer and guide the chisel, we are at once the smith and the flashing steel.”

In Stahlgewitten (‘Storm of Steel’, 1920)

Erich Maria Remarque“A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round.”

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality case over an abyss of sorrow.”(Nichts neues am Westen / All Quiet on the Western Front, 1928)

Verdun (1916)

Total War

State Intervention• 1915: Kreigsrohstoffabteilung

(Raw Materials Department, KRA) – ensures the acquisition, storage and distribution of materials vital to the war effort.

• 1915: Bread rationing introduced.• 1916: Zentral-Einkaufs-

Gesellschaft (Central Purchasing Company) – acquisition of goods from neutral countries.

• 1916: Reichsgetreidstelle (Imperial Gain Office) – controlled food supplies and issued ration cards .

• Hindenburg Programme (1916) – Intended to concentrate industry on the production of munitions.

• Auxiliary Service Law (1916): Government could conscript workers and decide where they should work.

Walter Rathenau (1867-1922), industrialist

and founder of the Kreigsrohstoffabteilung

“Krieg und Küche”

Designer Käte Spanier

Total WarAgriculture lost more than 1/2

prewar manpowerIndustry lost approx. 1/3 by

end of 1914No-strike promises & higher

wages attracted labor to war industries

By end of war, women made up 1/3-1/2 of war industry labor force. Women faced double burden & postwar backlash.

Food Shortage

Above Left: The first mobile kitchen (Gulaschkanone) in Berlin, c. 1916. Below Left: Queuing for food, 1917.

Mobilisation for ‘total war’Measures: Failures:

• War Raw Materials Office: coordination of industrial products.

• Food rationing in 1915.• War Food Office 1916.• Substitutes – clothes with paper

fibres.• Gaps in the labour force filled by

women (emancipation – double burden).

• Auxiliary Labour Law (1916): Government could conscript workers and decide where they should work.

• ‘Dictatorship’ of Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) – Hindenburg and Ludendorff – loss of influence for civil government – strengthening of army influence.

• Scarcity of clothing, soap, food.• Agricultural production fell, meat

consumption only 12% of pre-war level.

• Malnutrition and starvation – ‘turnip winter’ 1916/17 (consequence: up to 750,000 dead).

• Polarisation: pro ‘Siegfrieden’ (victorious peace) with far reaching war aims, pro peace without contributions and annexations.

• Middle Classes: pauperisation, living conditions closer to working class – but many now more nationalist, angst (loss of status) .

• Working Class: spontaneous strikes in 1916 and 1917.

What Victory Could Have Looked Like?

Treaty of Brest Litovsk (March 1918)

Russia lost most of its oil and cotton production

3/4 of coal & iron production

1/3 of railways and agriculture

1/3 of population including Ukraine, Finland, and Baltic States

Treaty of Bucharest (May 1918)

Romania returned or gave control of territories to Bulgaria (joined Central Allies) & Austria-Hungary

Also, gave control of its oil wells to Germany for 90 years.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918)

Source: G. Layton, From Bismarck to Hitler: Germany, 1890-1933

Final Military Gamble: The Spring Offensive 1918

March 1918: early successes quickly checked by fresh American troops--approx. 1 million Americans sent to Europe

By July, the Entente counterattack

August: Entente break through German lines

In the Face of Failure…Supreme Command placed the burden of

defeat onto a civilian govt. headed by Prince Max von Baden.

Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann became first SPD minister of newly formed cabinet.

3 October: Max von Baden sued for peace and set in motion October reforms

October Reforms• Brought together coalition of SPD,

Center Party, and liberals• Abolition of Prussian three-class

electoral system• Army brought under parliamentary

control• Max von Baden’s cabinet still reliant on

army’s cooperation. Hohenzollern empire remains in place…

CASUALTIES OF THE WORLD WAR

  Known dead Seriously wounded

Otherwise wounded

Prisoners or missing

Russia 2,762,064 1,000,000 3,950,000 2,500,000

Germany 1,611,104 1,600,000 2,183,143 772,522

France 1,427,800 700,000 2,344,000 453,500

Austria-Hungary 911,000 850,000 2,150,000 443,000

Great Britain 807,451 617,714 1,441,394 64,907

Serbia 707,343 322,000 28,000 100,000

Italy 507,160 500,000 462,196 1,359,000

Turkey 436,924 107,772 300,000 103,731

Rumania 339,117 200,000 ...... 116,000

Belgium 267,000 40,000 100,000 10,000

United States 107,284 43,000 148,000 4,912

Bulgaria 101,224 300,000 852,339 10,825

Greece 15,000 10,000 30,000 45,000

Portugal 4,000 5,000 12,000 200

Japan 300 ........ 907 3

Total 9,998,771 6,295,512 14,002,039 5,983,600